Saturday, 8 August 2009

-Not "traditional" Ethiopian music - strictly-speaking - but a good song and a remarkable music video! (Watch out for the soldier "playing air guitar" on his AK-47!)-Mahmoud Ahmed is one of Ethiopia's most famous singers, and it is a shame to see him in this video.

(Apologies for not embedding this video, but the ever-more-fickle YouTube tells me that "embedding [was] disabled by request"...)--UPDATE FEBRUARY 2012-Alas, the entire video has now disappeared - apparently due to copyright infringement(?!)...-So here is a concert given by the Eritrean singer Wedi Tkabo for frontline troops. Not as funky as the Mahmoud Ahmed original, but more traditional and still a strange sight to behold:-

-These two songs were found in the "Music" section of www.kabardins.comThe Kabards live in the north-western Caucasus. Many emigrated to the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, following the Russian invasion of the Caucasus.-Song 1 (solo accordion and solo male voice)Song 2 (solo accordion)--

Monday, 3 August 2009

The opening scene of an Armenian/Kurdish film called "Vodka Lemon" (directed by Hiner Saleem, 2003) features a remarkable performance by a Kurdish singer called Feyzoye Rizo (whose song is accompanied by Egide Cimo on the duduk):

Sunday, 2 August 2009

A zikr or dikhr is a religious ceremony practiced by certain Sufi Moslems around the world. Its most famous manifestation is probably the ceremony carried out by the so-called "whirling dervishes" in Turkey - a major tourist attraction in Istanbul and in Konya. Like their fellow zikr-practitioners, these Chechens aim to enter a trance-like state through mental and physical exhaustion, a state which will bring them closer to God. The powerful, fast rhythm, combined with the repetitive chanting and strong breathing, and with the spinning, circular movement, are particularly propitious. This is not "music", strictly speaking, but it bears all its hallmarks, and the result is amazing!--